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M1 Macs Review

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Re: M1 Macs Review

#211

Post by klelatti »

hawk_ wrote: post #206
tpush wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it matter whether you emit x86 code or ARM64 code? That code that produces either doesn't get magically faster when executed on their respective archs.

Edit: as had been pointed out here there is no x86 code generation happening so this doesn't apply. Yes I have seen claims from people along the lines of 'x86 code has more optimization paths in mainstream compilers for historic and other reasons'. Not sure about that, certainly can't imagine such a significant difference.

But it's emitting ARM64 code in both cases to optimisation paths not relevant here.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#212

Post by jakear »

zerkten wrote: post #47
ojosilva wrote: post #17

Here's looking at getting one. But I wonder what's the currently compatibility status of the dev stack: node, git, go, java, nginx, databases (pg, mongo, maria...), editors (macvim, vscode...), iTerm, et al. And the brew family of installs, which was covered as part of yesterday's thread [1]. Macos ships with some interpreters pre-installed as part of BigSur, including Ruby, Python and Perl. And most source distribut…

I think VS Code will get there very quickly given demand and availability on Windows ARM. For nginx etc, many people have moved to Docker or uses Vagrant workflows which may slow them down. Anyone who follows more classic workflows or installs from Brew should be in better shape.

VS Code is targeting an Insiders release for Apple Silicon by end of November. Experimental builds are available now. https://twitter.com/code/status/1326237772860981249?s=20

(on the team)

Re: M1 Macs Review

#213

Post by lostlogin »

mattkevan wrote: post #173
heelix wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty convinced my i9 mac does not have a fan either. A noise maker, yes... but the 2018 model just seems to have a loud audible indicator that docker started. :)

In the same way my car beeps to remind me I’ve left the lights on, my MacBook buzzes to remind me I’ve still got Microsoft Teams open.

There is something wrong with Teams. As well as it’s resource hogging, it tries to connect to all my SMB shares (even if they are disconnected) when I open the app. Why is it doing this?

Re: M1 Macs Review

#214

Post by ActorNightly »

yhersk0vitz wrote: post #16

I feel like this may the first time that Macbooks might actually be worth their premium from a purely hardware perspective. Before people jump on this, I mean that for example the previous Intel MB Pro with i5 would cost like $1,500, which is far more than almost any windows laptop running the same specs.

Has there been any sort of long term load tests? I feel like the chassis limitations are going to result in thermal throttling compared to similar performance laptops with actual cooling design. Even if it doesn't thermal throttle, one of my main complaints with Macbooks is that you can't actually use them in your lap cause they get uncomfortably hot.

As for being worth it, wait till the next gen mobile chips in 2021. I feel like we will see similar performance fairly soon in cheaper laptops without being locked into the Apple ecosystem.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#215

Post by x87678r »

kzrdude wrote: post #200
x87678r wrote: post #22

I'm blown away with how good they seem to work. I was about to buy a Lenovo x86 laptop on Black Friday but put it on hold. I presumed M1 was going to be like a Surface X. With Ryzen laptop chips slowly arriving too, next year should be a good one.

What hope do we have that M1-like chips are available soon in regular non-apple notebooks? I guess the chance is zero.

Not M1, but MS has Windows running on its own ARM chip as well. I presume it'll get a bigger push now. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-pro-x/8QG3BMRHNWHK

Re: M1 Macs Review

#216

Post by kllrnohj »

nightski wrote: post #208
kllrnohj wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can get a few hours of light gaming in on my Zephryus G14 on battery, and it has a vastly faster GPU than the one in the M1 such that I can also still play demanding games when tethered to a wall (it also has a VRR 120hz screen). A trick that the MacBooks can no longer pull of at all since eGPU support was killed. It's a fantastic experience, but in no way has having this laptop for the last 6 months "redefined how…

No idea why you are being downvoted, is HN really a group of Apple shills? I have the Zephyrus G14 also and love it. I'm closely watching the M1 but I really don't think it can compete with a GTX 2060. That matters a lot to me. It also has an AMD 4900HS which while not an M1 is a fantastic processor.

> I'm closely watching the M1 but I really don't think it can compete with a GTX 2060. That matters a lot to me.

Per anandtech the M1 comes kinda-close sometimes to the 1650 mobile: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...

It's then soundly wrecked by the 1660 Ti mobile, and the 2060 MaxQ is then faster yet still. They obviously also take a lot more power at peak, but that's also going to be a huge difference in the actual gaming experience, too.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#217

Post by danpalmer »

BooneJS wrote: post #79

“New Intel chips were often delayed and offered only small improvements over previous generations.” As noted on HN and elsewhere, Intel’s struggle has been in manufacturing. They minimized risk (“got lazy”) when Moore’s Law reigned and their fabs were 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else, but have since squeezed every last architectural drop out of 14nm. Put Tiger Lake on TSMC 5nm and a lot of M1’s lead goes away.…

> But the recent hero worship is a bit awkward to read as Apple is generally following an accepted playbook in the End Times of Moore’s law.

Is anyone else doing this though? It might be the theoretical playbook, but if others aren't doing this in practice then Apple are worthy of credit for pulling it off.

1 - accelerators for specific things aren't new, and lots of processors have an H264 accelerator, but Apple seems to be pushing this a bit further than others. Even low power vs high power cores doesn't seem to be something others are doing much of. 2 - I don't know enough about. 3 - Apple has put a ton of FP units on this seemingly for JS performance, anyone else could be doing that, it's not a big spoiler to know that people run a lot of JS now, and yet the M1 has more FP units than any other consumer CPU. This knowledge about the software workloads seems to be beyond what others are working on.

It seems to be more than just the 5nm process, not least because the A14 generation is the first 5nm chip but Apple's chips have been well respected back to 7 and 10nm for similar reasons.

Caveat, very much a layman on this, but it seems like Apple are executing that playbook significantly better than others.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#218

Post by kube-system »

djs55 wrote: post #168
hart_russell wrote: post #12

I received an M1 mini 2 days ago. I noticed the Steam client seems to be a bit laggy in UI responsiveness, but besides that I have no complaints. I got it for use as a server, so I was a bit dismayed to hear that M1 Docker support has hit a roadblock, but hopeful that they figure it out soon.

Don't worry, we (at Docker) have been working on Apple Silicon support for a while. The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2 but the local VM inside Desktop will take a little bit longer to port. Just in case you haven't seen it there's some further info on Docker+M1 in the blog post: https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docke...

> The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2

Does this mean I can `docker run` using a remote (x86_84) docker host in the meantime?

Re: M1 Macs Review

#219

Post by nunez »

Once Docker works on ARM, I’m gonna make the switch. I was very very close to trading in my 2020 MBP and eating the loss, especially after seeing the insane WebKit compilation times and battery usage. I loathe the Touch Bar and am very excited about having a MBA that doesn’t suck.

The only concern I have is this: it is my understanding that the arm7 instruction set differs slightly from vendor. Is that true? I’m thinking of what problems I might run into with shipping apps destined for AWS Gravitron.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#220

Post by addaon »

tpush wrote: post #111
addaon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the challenges of using a large-screen device in the sun is that most screen technologies (including transmissive LCD and OLED, but excluding eInk and transflective LCDs) are inherently "black" -- they absorb light energy that hits them. Even when they're displaying a white screen, they're absorbing nearly all of the light hitting them, and then emitting their own energy. One of my mild annoyances with the iPh…

> One of my mild annoyances with the iPhone 12 is that there's no white option. But there is a white iPhone 12? I have one myself. Or is not white enough/too matte or something?

Whoops! My mistake, thanks for that! I has been looking only at the Pro out of habit, but this might push me towards the non-Pro this generation.
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